New Eco-Service landfill site

RA L’Avenir reported that on the morning of Thursday, September 19th, the Nine Palms Forest Stewards discovered an area had been cleared without prior notice for a new Eco-Service landfill. The issue of where to dump the Auroville landfill waste had been a matter of urgency for around one month, due to neighbours blocking access to the previous site. The Eco-Service team had taken the problem to the AVFO ‘ATDC’, who initially did not respond to the email requests for action.

Then the Eco-Service team took the drastic action of dumping several loads of landfill waste in front of the Town Hall in order to get their attention.

However, the plot that has been cleared is situated in a highly sensitive zone, being directly above a major water catchment area. Disposal of waste in the selected location may pollute the entire chain of tanks, Kaluveli swamp and contaminate the water table. Designating a site as a landfill requires careful site assessment, including the location of the site within the watershed and also the geological strata underneath, to check for suitability and to prevent contamination to groundwater and surface water bodies downstream. However, no such process has been followed in this case.